


Beloved Schism

by ThisCatastrophe



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Cults, Historical References, M/M, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Roman Catholicism, Saints, That highly sought-after late medieval French Catholic AU, you know the one.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 20:49:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15759426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisCatastrophe/pseuds/ThisCatastrophe
Summary: The year is 1393: France, the middle of a turbulent time in the religious world. A priest, working for a man who claims to be the true Pope, hires a mercenary to kill a dangerous heretical cult leader who's been terrorizing the countryside. The mercenary sets out, not knowing what he will find.AU where Kakuzu is a mercenary and Hidan is a saint. Lots of history, lots of Catholic lore.(Created for the KakuHida 2018 Reverse Big Bang)





	1. Creation of Man

A sculpture of the Virgin Mary looms far above Kakuzu, casting a shadow on the floor as the early morning light filters in through the window above the altar. Outside, he hears sparrows chasing each other in circles around the spires of the church, plucking feathers and stealing bits of stale bread. The priest, an old fellow with a stooped back, holds the corner of his chasuble over his nose; in this age of sickness, Kakuzu can’t blame the fellow for the offense.

“This man,” he begins, folding the papal bull between his forefingers, “he’s a false prophet?”

“More than just that.” From a hidden pocket, the priest produces a scrap of vellum, well-worn with months of sermons, pen-ripped and stained. “He’s wanted for heresy, sorcery, apostasy, sodomy, fornication, blasphemy, sacrilege and scandal. Aside from the charges from the King, that is.”

“He sounds like a well-cultured fellow, then.” Kakuzu tucks the bull into his breast pocket before the priest can protest, glancing back for a split second to watch the early-rising villagers as they filter into the church, staying thankfully near the door and out of the stale air near the altar. “And such a wanted man’s death is being commissioned by a cardinal  _ in pectore _ ?”

This statement earns a scowl from the priest, who clutches his cream-white cloak, maybe hard enough to seep blood into the vestments. Make them red like you want them to be, Kakuzu thinks. Wouldn’t that be fun?

“The offices of His Holiness Onfroi II do not want to draw attention to the heretics. In particular,” the priest clears his throat, frowning at Kakuzu, “Cardinal Bishop Josse believes that such distress in the midst of this rift of believers and the plague could drive men from the Church.”

Kakuzu turns to face the villagers at the doorway, watches them bow, deep and fearful, towards the altar. “He doesn’t think the Church’s infighting itself is driving men away?”

“We aren’t paying you to ask questions, mercenary.” The priest passes before him to pluck a small vial of stinking liquid from a tray offered up by a young boy in white. He presses the open mouth of the vial to his palm before replacing it, then rubs the liquid on his hands and neck. Around him hangs a sterile miasma, strong with the smell of horehound; Kakuzu thinks the mixture must be misbrewed, and silently hopes that it will fail in its efforts to keep sickness at bay. 

“If you’ll excuse me,” the priest says, nodding at a weathered door just left of the altar, “I believe your payment is ready in my study. See yourself out.”

Behind a wedged-shut door, Kakuzu finds a rucksack full of livres tournois, bundled themselves in groups of 40 and wrapped in strips of rough cloth bound with hide straps. He shoulders the pack and, as an afterthought, a copy of a book of poetry half-hidden beneath the room’s rug before leaving. From the road, he listens to the service, the recitations and chants and readings from the good book, until the priest’s words are drowned out by birds.


	2. Parables

“Old man,” he says, “pull up a bucket of water for me.”

Beneath the sparse shade of a rough well, the old man rests with his head bowed and legs pulled in close. He looks up to the traveler, smiles at the offered few livres tournois and rises to the well’s crank.

Kakuzu takes the old man’s spot in the shade and listens to the gentle rasp of the wooden crank. He examines the caked dust on his shoes, then closes his eyes and basks in the cool of the shadow.

“A foreigner, then?” says the old man. With a creak of old bones he sits beside Kakuzu, placing the wellbucket between them. “You certainly don’t look like a Gaul, and you can’t be a Frank, and I doubt you’re a Breton… a Moor, or maybe a Saracen?”

“All wrong.” The water feels wonderful against his road-chapped hands; he forces himself to wash them up a little before dipping back in for a drink. “I’m from much farther away than Araby originally. But I assure you, I’m Gaul to the bone by now.”

Wrinkle-ringed eyes appraise him. The old man dips his own hands into the bucket and sips slowly at the creases of his fingers. A long, crystal-clear trickle of water creeps down his chin; Kakuzu thinks to check for a nearby stream, somewhere tucked away from civilization, so he can refill his waterskin. “If you’re Gaul to the bone, young one, have you heard all the tales of Ankou?”

“Young one? I’m sure I’m not much younger than you.”

Little droplets scatter from the peasant’s hands to the earth. “Youth is a relative term. Ah, my friend—” He reaches up to hold Kakuzu’s arm, caught mid-stand— “Stay a moment. Listen to an old serf’s tale.”

Something about the old man compels Kakuzu. After just the slightest hesitation, he sits back down, pulling the water bucket closer.

“Here in Normandy,” he begins, “we have a legend about Ankou. He’s death’s right-hand-man, that.”

“Careful.” Kakuzu dips his hands into the bucket for another drink. “You’re speaking to a messenger of the Church.”

The old man scoffs gently and loosens the frayed ties that close the neck of his shirt. “I’m committing no sacrilege.” As if to confirm his innocence, he shapes a cross on his forehead. “But the Good Book makes no mention of whose dirty work it is to pick up the souls. That was decided long before the Church’s time.”

“As it was told to me, Ankou was a young prince who lost a contest to Death. He’s been cursed to wander the earth, collecting the souls of the dead in his cart.” From a pouch inside his shirt the old man produces a wineskin, stopped with a firm bit of old oilcloth. “Some say Ankou is the last dead man of the year. Either way, this Ankou doesn’t make sense.” He fumbles with the stopper and frowns.

“ _ This  _ Ankou?” Kakuzu reaches out and removes the stop from the old man’s wineskin, setting it on the wall above them.

“This one, the one I’ve come to know… young man, he fills his cart daily. Piles on more bodies than he can carry. I’ve never known a man to be afraid of Ankou—he only takes those who are at their time—but it seems this Ankou is rivalling Death himself.”

Kakuzu scoffs. “Folk tales all. It’s this plague, old-timer.”

“Listen, you. I know healthy men found half-dead in their homes. I’ve seen the heads of children divorced their bodies. I’ve  _ seen _ the Ankou, boy.” Wrinkled eyes narrow into slits beneath furled brows. “I’ve seen him, I tell you.”

“You have,” Kakuzu murmurs. “Well, what’s he look like, Ankou?”

The old man takes a deep drink from the wineskin and mulls, silently watching the fields of wheat that dance in the distance. “He’s too young for an Ankou,” he begins. “It’s got to be a vengeful Ankou. I know I would be, had I been that young.”

“He’s got no cart, this one. He carries men off over his shoulder, or he spreads their bodies open in the streets. I’ve seen good men ripped apart before their time, parts of them open to the sun that the good Lord never intended any man to see. He wears the mask of death, the black and white paint and the rags, but he’s got eyes that…”

Kakuzu notices a still in the air, an absence of birds. The old man takes a long and slow drink from his wineskin, draining it dry before casting it aside into the grass. Despite the season, he feels a chill around his ears and on the nape of his neck.

“I’ve seen his eyes before,” says the old man. “On someone without the mask. It was a traveller moving south. Moving for Massif Central, I think. He was too rough for my liking. Had the wife speak to him instead.”

“So your Ankou is moving south.” Kakuzu stares at the empty wineskin, hands folded in his lap. “He’s going into the mountains?”

“Never said that was Ankou.”

“Well.” With a sigh, Kakuzu rises and brushes dust from his trousers. “You didn’t say a lot of things.”

“Be careful, son.” A flock of birds breaks the silence, fluttering from a patch of trees to land near a field of wheat. “I swear to you I saw that young man remove his head.”

Kakuzu scoffs and stretches his back, pressing knuckles into the center of his spine. “You’re a lunatic.”

“No lies. The world is more poorly explained than anyone wants you to know.”

He steps away from the well and looks back, then forth down the road. No other travelers stir up the dust, and the sun hangs still high in the sky—a perfect day to walk south towards the mountains. Assuming that the mysterious traveler was really his charge, that is. 

“Say, old man,” Kakuzu says. “You’re awfully learned for a peasant. Where did you—”

But as he turns back, nobody stands at the well. On the stone retaining wall, the bucket sits upturned, dry as dust.

*

“Come sit with me, friend,” says the soldier.

He sits alone by the fireplace, watching the pop and crackle of last winter’s dry branches in the flame. A long bench, made from a split rail, supports his stoop and a many-times-mended cup of wine sits next to his left boot. At his side is a fine, strong sword, wrapped tightly in supple leather. Behind him, a ring of silent old farmers and traveling merchants sit at chairs and at tables and along the bar, ignoring the war-ragged man at the fire.

Kakuzu looks at the creased faces around the room, men with hands hardened by dirt but hearts soft as down, and sits beside the soldier. It’s been a long, rough trip, more rain than is seasonable, but at other times a hotter sun than he’d like, and altogether far too many hills and stones and upset dogs and eerily staring peasants. He calls over a serving girl and gestures for her to refill the soldier’s wine.

“Generous of you,” says the soldier. “It’s rare to meet as true a man as you these days. Here, for you.” He reaches down to pick up the winecup and passes it to Kakuzu, smiling in that tight-mouthed way that soldiers, he’d found, often do.

“Much appreciated.” Kakuzu takes the cup with a gentle nod and sips at it. The wine, he finds, is sweet and cloying, not quite the sort he usually likes, but it sticks to his lips and begs him to take a longer, deeper drink. Instead, he passes the cup back with a gentle ache and calls for a cheaper drink for himself.

The soldier settles his elbows into the crooks of his knees, watching the dance of flames and the play of light on the floorboards. “Say, stranger,” he murmurs, “You happen to be going south? I’ve heard tell of some other odd fellows going that direction.” He pauses, then laughs gently. “Not that you’re odd. I just don’t usually see someone who looks like you this far from civilization.”

“I wasn’t aware we’d ever left civilization.” A serving girl underfills a cup of cheap wine for Kakuzu, and he takes it with a thinly-veiled contemptuous look. It smells different from the soldier’s wine, earthy and thick, but he downs it anyway.

“If you ask me, the bounds of civilization are much closer in at the sides than anyone knows.” With a creak of stiff joints, the soldier reaches out for a small log, stacked precariously atop a pile of its brothers, and throws it into the fire in a burst of ash and spark. “Be careful in the south, my friend. I hear rumors of strange and violent men in the mountains.”

“Rumors are just that,” Kakuzu says.

“Sometimes.” The soldier takes another drink of his wine and watches the flames.

They sit side by side for some time as the late evening crowds wander wobbly home. The serving girls sit down at tables with jugs of wine between them, leaning heavy foreheads on their hands and pouring the dregs of wine together into potent, disgusting mixtures that they bolt with noses wrinkled. Beside Kakuzu, the soldier slumps deeper and deeper into his seat, shoulderblades sticking up through his thin tunic like gravestones atop a hill. Some time deep into the evening, a horse whinnies out on the street, and a thirsting, atrophied tear falls down his face.

“I confess,” he says, “I drink to the memory of my dear comrade.” The soldier lifts his cup towards the fire as if presenting it to a friend. “Ankou’s taken him away from me.” Healthier tears, fat and clear, follow dirty tracks down his cheeks to collect on his chin. Kakuzu remains silent.

“Be careful in the south, stranger,” the soldier says. He stands and pours his drink into the fire, then turns and leaves the pub.

Kakuzu watches the fire flicker and splutter against wine-soaked logs. The drink makes a valiant effort, but the fire continues and eventually roars back as best it can. 

When he leaves, he nearly trips in the doorway. A sword, wrapped in fine leather, lies across the stoop and obstructs his path. He pushes it aside quickly and continues down the road.

*

Kakuzu does not wake up until a shadow falls over his lap. Thin shadows, cast from tree branches and rolling clouds, bring him in and out of sleep, but the thicker shadow of a young man’s form wakes him entirely. He opens his eyes slowly, still drowsy, and looks up at the black figure that blots out the light.

“I’d like to sit with you,” says the figure in a clear, young, vigorous voice. “If you don’t mind, pilgrim.”

“Be my guest,” Kakuzu mutters. He gestures at his side, indicating a section of tree stump free for leaning against, and closes his eyes again.

“Much appreciated.” The tall grass rustles and bows, whispering against Kakuzu’s skin in places as the young man sits nearby.

He feels no sleeve pressed against his and detects no gentle sighs of repose. For a long minute Kakuzu ignores the young man’s odd behavior; maybe he’s simply rooting in a pocket for some lost scrap of paper or for a bit of saved-up bread.

The silence wears on, and Kakuzu finally opens his eyes to find the young man seated cross-legged in the grass, staring at him with a keen, hawkish look. No stranger to odd behavior (and certainly not of late), Kakuzu merely sighs at him and folds his arms across his stomach.

“Could I help you, stranger?” he says. “It’s rude to stare, you know.”

“You could, actually. I’d like to know what you intend to do with Master Hidan.”

Kakuzu reopens his eyes and watches the young man’s posture: straight back, rigid arms, intelligent gaze. A pike, tied to his back, rests behind him on the grass, and his clothes seem more akin to a fighter’s than a mere traveler’s. “Is that our heretic’s name, then?” he asks, sitting up straighter. “Hidan?”

The young man scowls and leans forward as if restraining himself poorly from violence. “He is not a heretic,” he mutters. “He is the only true prophet in a world run by liars and antipopes.”

“That isn’t what Cardinal Bishop Josse seems to think.” He turns to rest an arm across the tree stump. Behind him, mountains sprout into the clouds. “Or His Holiness Onfroi, either.” He does not trouble asking how this young man knows his plans. Kakuzu, having been the watchful eye many times before, recognizes the feeling of scrutiny all too well. 

“Neither my master nor myself care for the self-named popes. Leaders are named only by Yeshin, and Yeshin has named but one.” The young man unties the pike from his back and pulls it to lie across his lap, gripping it midway through. “And, pilgrim, you haven’t answered my question.”

Kakuzu watches the young man’s hands and shoulders. His knuckles are too big for his hands, his chest turned up as if puffed full of air. In places his clothes don’t fit well, and in others they are patched, yet some patches are affixed in a much steadier hand than others. One arm hides a charm incompletely tucked in the man’s belt; he catches a glimpse of a crude dog’s head on its face, radiating carved rays of light. Saint Christophe, or possibly Saint Guinefort.

This is but a boy, he knows.

He produces the bull note from his pocket and carefully unfolds it in his lap. The boy looks it over as pieces of the writing reveal themselves, no doubt entirely lost in the words. His eyes scan the wrong places at the wrong times, but he eventually settles where he should: the seal of Cardinal Bishop Josse, and the proxy seal of Pope Onfroi II beside it.

“I’ve been hired by the offices of Onfroi and his followers to clear out a certain heretic. Onfroi’s men seem to think that your master is a threat to Onfroi’s papacy claim.”

A scowl grows on the boy’s face, and his brows furrow in a caricature of fury. “It will not work. My master is protected by Yeshin.” He turns a leg and leans into it, looking past Kakuzu’s shoulder and into the mountains with a sudden shift to reverence. “Though for the false prophets to send such an impressive mercenary… you may be of use to him.”

“We’ll see.” Kakuzu glances back at the mountains himself, watching for motion on the nearest slopes. “I will admit, this trip makes your master Hidan sound very interesting. Certainly he isn’t an average heretic. Come to think of it, just what sort of Gaul names his child—”

A sudden puff of black smoke, which stinks like burning skin and rotting meat, passes his face. Where the boy once was, there is only a mass of ash and the dispersing grey.

“Hidan,” Kakuzu finishes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical notes:  
> Saracen?  
> [Ankou, death's henchman](https://inventorybag.com/blogs/normandescendants/ankou-the-henchman-of-death)  
> Where is [Massif Central](https://about-france.com/tourism/massif-central.htm)?  
> [Wine in the French middle ages](http://www.wineterroirs.com/2012/12/wine_in_the_middle_ages-.html).  
> What Saints are on that boy's medallion? Either patron of bachelors Saint Christopher ([Christophe](https://www.catholicsaintmedals.com/about-st-christopher.aspx) in French) or your new fave, healer of children and actual dog [Saint Guinefort](http://ultimatehistoryproject.com/the-cult-of-guinefort-an-unusual-saint.html).  
> [Some actual Gaul names](https://www.s-gabriel.org/names/tangwystyl/gaulish/#reflink).


	3. Sermon on the Mount

The local priest was the only man in the mountain-foot village with enough words to mark a mountain path on Kakuzu’s map. With a fingernail marking the mountain peak, he winds through ill-kept roads and under gates, past obvious (to him, at least) traps and shrines to saints whose names he cannot recall. 

Kakuzu passes around a thick stand of trees, dodging under a taut wire and stepping over a narrow hay-covered pit. Before him lies an open field, thick with low grass and sloping gently until it comes to a rock face, smoothed over from the ages, which sprouts into the true mountainside, pointing to the clouds. Trees and pagan fetishes stand away from the field; only clouds and the mountain itself shadow the grass.

Save for the zealots.

Dressed in ill-fitting robes as if none of the cult can recall how to tie them proper, they dot the field at random, staring Kakuzu down with sharp eyes. Each carries a pike in their hands, or slung on their back, or point-down in the grass at their feet. They do not hide. They have no need.

“This must be the place,” Kakuzu announces to the gathered crowd.

*

Around a curve in the mountain path, Kakuzu finally stops to wipe blood from his sword. Some poor peasant’s hair has become tangled around the blade, and with a grimace, he sloughs it to the ground along with the rest of the ichor. 

At his feet lies a pike, broken in half by a good, strong kick midway through the fight. As he suspected would happen, the weapon’s owner was stunned and unable to react before his head parted from his body. Kakuzu had tucked the pike’s two portions under an arm and brought it with him from the killing field.

This particular pike had ripped a particularly terrible hole in the loose fabric of Kakuzu’s sleeve, much worse than any pike had a right to do, nearly catching him fast in a vicious hold. With a frown, he crouches to examine the weapon; he finds it to be topped in spikes and barbs with no cutting edge to speak of: a curious choice for a weapon, but one strangely familiar at the same time.

He recalls other tableaus from the skirmish: pikes with smooth, tapered ends, nearly perfectly round rather than flat and broad, all horribly long but unwieldy in the wrong hands. Bodies moved in failed, low-to-the-ground snaps, a try at efficiency of movement that never met its mark. It seemed almost as watching men speaking an unfamiliar language, stumbling over their words and backtracking to lessons half-remembered.

With a sigh, he leaves the broken weapon behind, despite its intrigue. His sword works much better. 

*

The old man almost drops his weapon at Kakuzu’s feet. He grips his pike tighter with one hand and peels back a spacious sleeve with the other, revealing a ropy, lean arm, tempered by years of malnutrition. 

Kakuzu easily parries the first stab, aimed towards the center of his belly. His sword skips along the pike’s shaft and swipes across the old man’s face, ripping his ear free.

With a sickening scream, the old man drops to the ground, holding his bloodied side. The ear tumbles down the slope, bouncing off rocks and vanishing into the grass, and his pike clatters to Kakuzu’s feet. The sword gives a smart hiss as it swings to an exposed throat, where it presses into age and sun-wrinkled flesh.

“Old man,” Kakuzu says, “you remind me of someone. Have I met you before?”

The old man looks up. For a second Kakuzu swears that there is a glimmer of recognition in his rheumy eyes, but the glimmer is only mistrust. With a hiss, the old man spits at Kakuzu’s chest.

Much later, his head comes to a rest against a stump near the base of the mountain, seeping blood into the thick, healthy grasses. The grasses grow tall and juicy, attracting rabbits and goats and lazy herding boys who roll about and lie in summertime repose on the old man’s unlikely grave.

*

“You’re good, my friend,” Kakuzu says. He slips backwards and to the side as the tip of a pike whistles past his face, sword tapping against the shaft to ensure safe passage. “Perhaps you were a soldier in years past?”

“Perhaps.” The zealot shrugs a shoulder, untwisting his sleeve from his weapon. His face rumples in a mirthless smile, casting deep creases on a high forehead. “Or perhaps I’ve existed like this always, working for my Lord’s benefit.”

“Quite a mental gymnast, you are.” The adjustment of a sleeve causes an opening; Kakuzu steps forward and stabs into the space near the zealot’s waist, catching much more loose fabric than flesh.

The zealot spins with the cut, sending a thin spray of blood in an arc that paints the rock walls of the mountain passage. The red of his blood mingles with the curious black blotches of his robe, drawing the dye away and marring whatever image was once there.

“And you’re quite the heretic. Which false prophet sent you?” The pike returns, jabbing irregularly at Kakuzu’s waist, arms, legs. “His Blasphemy Galante? Prince of Apostates Correnbalde? Bishop of Sodom Onfroi?”

“The last.” Kakuzu steps back, shoulders tense, trying to avoid the pike’s terrifying reach. “Is he really a sodomite? I have heard a charge of the same for your master.”

The zealot hisses savagely and stamps a foot on the ground, flexing for a grand stab aimed at Kakuzu’s belly. Kakuzu takes the tiny opening and brushes past the pike’s shaft, sliding his sword cleanly between the folds of the man’s robe.

Curses spill from his lips for a full minute as his body sinks to the ground. With his last breath, he calls Kakuzu a blasphemer himself. Kakuzu merely files away the charges against Lord Onfroi.

*

An unholy shriek greets him as he turns around the final corner. Up a steep slope, one final devotee, robe rumpled and tied off around the waist, bends his back and shakes his pike at the sky.

Each new devotee shows renewed skill with their weapons. Kakuzu had long passed the sloppy learners halfway up the slope. No, now he saw an increase in deadly accuracy, the intelligent fighters’ eyes and the crouched pose that reminded him so of a time and place long gone. 

But with the increase in skill comes a decrease in self-preservation. The last two zealots, while deadly fast and pinpoint accurate, had fallen upon his sword the minute an opening showed. He’d sliced an arm off one and watched him still bitterly fight, swinging wildly with his pike as if an extension of his remaining limb. 

The final devotee tears down the slope like a falling boulder, pike extended from his hip. His voice gutters and peaks wildly. In his eyes, just before the end, Kakuzu sees an unhinged look, and he feels a tiny, brief prickle of fear for the first time in years.

His sword cleanly slices off the devotee’s head. It lodges itself in a rockwall, still gurgling, as the body tumbles down the hill to join its brothers.

*   

At the mountain peak, there is a three-walled shrine, bearing on its interior walls arcane symbols and writings in foreign tongues. A stiff breeze pushes around the tapestries that cover the exterior and brings up the scent of distant blood. Thick black smoke issues from an incense burner, placed just within the shrine’s doorway.

Before the shrine sits the prophet, waiting for the man sent to kill him.

This man, a dark-skinned mercenary with a bloodied sword and a stern look, mounts the peak slowly, contemplative. The blood of many good and devoted men stains his travel shroud. From the neck of his shirt peeks a slip of cream parchment, clearly a papal bull signing the prophet’s fate away.

He curses and stands to meet the killer.

*

The false prophet is headless, Kakuzu finds. He stands blotting out the late sun, ringed in the light that filters through thin clouds, surrounded by the thick smoke of incense and dressed in red-trimmed robes, and he holds his head in his hands. His deep frown comes not from above his shoulder but from his belly.

Kakuzu advances slowly, mesmerized. This must be a statue to the prophet, he thinks, not the true prophet. A headless saint is the stuff of miracles, something he’s never had the blessing of seeing with his own eyes. It happens only in stories from far-off places, only to people of consequence.

But the head swears at him. It calls him a string of terrible, stomach-twisting words, insinuates horrible things about his departed mother, and Kakuzu is certain the words come from this severed head. 

He drops his sword to the ground and advances bare-handed towards the figure. His hands reach to his shirtfront, brushing over the folded-up bull. The figure holds its ground and curses him, with every step closer appearing more radiant and otherworldly.

Kakuzu arrives at the false prophet and sinks to his knees. From a pouch about his neck he produces a needle and thread, raising the tool in his outstretched hand.

“Prophet Hidan,” he murmurs. “I am handier with a needle than a sword. Would you allow me to sew your head back on?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway through, friends.
> 
> Historical notes:  
> [What kind of fighting style was that?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Djutsu)  
> Did you know that the Japanese made a weapon [specifically designed to grab sleeves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodegarami)?  
> [Long papal titles](https://www.britannica.com/topic/pope) mean good opportunities for sick burns on several key religious figures (none of which are real, for the record).  
> [Headless saints in Christian art](https://reliquarian.com/2014/11/11/the-head-carriers-headless-saints-from-saint-denis-to-saint-nicasius/).


	4. Garden of Gethsemane

“A Moor?”

“Not a Moor. Not even close.”

“Really? You’re dark enough by far. Saracen?”

“Not Saracen, either. Farther to the east.”

“Farther? Hm… a Tatar?”

“Closer still, but not quite.” Kakuzu brushes dust from his cloak and adjusts the sword in his belt. “I believe my homeland is unknown to most Gauls.”

“Is it, now?” Hidan watches Kakuzu’s face for a moment, examining the creases of age and the lines of lineage. “Well, you look Tatar to me.”

“I can pull those stitches out, you know.”

Hidan’s hand closes over his own throat, hiding the black threads that hold his head in place. Together they pick a path down the mountain, stepping over the bodies of devotees, broken weapons, dislodged rocks and puddles of blood. 

“Please don’t unsew my head so soon,” he admonishes. “And tell me again why Onfroi’s own mercenary spares me even after killing my men?”

“Curiosity, and none else. Now, you tell me why a so-called saint doesn’t seem bothered by the deaths of his entire sect.”

Hidan turns around a hairpin bend and carefully descends a craggy, natural stair. “Yeshinism sees the nature of Man differently than mainline Catholicism.” He puffs and hops down another step, holding the tail of his robe in one fist to keep it from under his feet. Even at his upward angle, Kakuzu can see the lean, solid muscle of his lower legs; he wonders how much, if any, of this man’s life was devoted to religion until recently.    

“The word of Yeshin—that is, Jesu as he rightfully appears to true believers—states that humanity is a blight on God’s creation. Lord Yeshin blesses the right-minded, the knowledgeable-but-flawed, in exchange for their protection of that which is perfect. That… being the land and the natural order without man.”

The mercenary folds his arms over his stomach. “So, you think that death and killing are a holy duty?” he calls.

From the bottom of the natural stair, Hidan turns his head to look back at Kakuzu. “Exactly that. While…” he frowns slightly, just enough to be visible from the angle, “I am annoyed you murdered my  _ entire _ shrine-guard, it falls in line with my beliefs quite nicely. Jailing them or converting them would have made me livid.”

Kakuzu considers this for a moment. With care, he lowers himself down the stair, less leaping down the slope and more climbing. “So you believe they’re in a better place now?”

“Not quite, but I do think the place is better without them.” Hidan turns to look out at the sky, folding his arms. “To be completely honest, I was thinking of leaving Massif Central soon anyway, and I would have killed them all when I moved on, so you saved me the trouble.”

Kakuzu slips off the last stair and lands neatly on the ground beside him. “Disgusting,” he mutters.

“You’re the one who spared me, messenger. You’re just as disgusting as I.”

With that, Hidan rounds another bend and continues down the mountain path, leaving Kakuzu to stare out at the slopes of lesser mountains.

*

He finds Hidan once more at the base of the mountain. Shrubs and branches have been pushed aside, revealing a path he’d missed the first time up the slope. Kakuzu winds down the narrow passage, pushing aside vines and leaves, and finds his charge standing in a wild garden that surrounds a tiny, murky pool.

“We grew flowers that we stole from churchyards,” Hidan says. “They’ve all been swallowed up by creeping vines and saplings.” He picks a wild berry from an overhanging tree and flicks it into the water. 

For a moment, they’re both silent. Hidan stares into the pool’s ripples, pulling leaves from a vine until it stands bare, serpent-like. The scent of blood from the slopes fades away and becomes no more than an iron twinge.

“I don’t believe that anyone is truly removed from Creation,” Hidan murmurs. “Your life returns to God’s hands, to be better served and better lived elsewhere. We’d all be happier and safer as something other than human. The world would be a bright and holy place without the race of Man, but that does not mean we must wipe away the essence of ourselves. And in pursuit of that task, Yeshin requires few rules of us. We must live quickly and beautifully like a sunset before dark, enjoying and partaking before we advance to a better version of this world.”

“You make no sense, prophet,” Kakuzu says. He pulls the papal bull from his shirtfront and looks it over, brows creased. “No sense at all.” But the bull’s script seems stagnant now, as if it comes from a distant land. He scans it slowly as if relearning the meanings of words. 

After a silent minute, his eyes drift away and wander across Hidan, turned away to look at the narcissus fields that surround this side of the mountain. His robe has slipped down around his shoulders, exposing delicate pale skin pulled taut over muscle. Pale hair brushes against his neck and shadows his ears; the line of his throat is highlighted in the sun. 

Kakuzu clears his throat. “Speaking of making no sense,” he begins, “this order from the Church makes some outrageous claims of you. It says you’re both a fornicator and a sodomite.”

Hidan turns back and fixes his eyes on Kakuzu, face calm and unreadable. “Me, a sodomite? Now.”

“Is that true?” Kakuzu asks.

“Hm.” A moment passes before Hidan swivels to fully face Kakuzu. “Let’s make a deal. Throw out the bull and I’ll show you whether that’s true.”

For quite some time, Kakuzu stands with the bull in his hand. He considers the bundled packets of livres tournois in his satchel, the many men in the Church’s employ, the recommendations of holy and powerful men and the comfort of society.

He then considers Hidan, and throws the bull into the flowers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, the art is not mine, but it's been reproduced with permission. Go check out [Melty](https://meltyfase.tumblr.com/) and reblog the original [here](https://meltyfase.tumblr.com/post/177187971659/part-deux-of-my-collab-w-thiscatastrophe-for).


	5. Sodom and Gomorrah

In the fading heat of late fall, they hide together in a rented room on the top floor of a country inn.

Under Kakuzu’s hands, Hidan groans long and languid. Nobody else he’s made love to sounds this way, Kakuzu thinks: women with bitten-back, shy moans and men with shamed eyes, prostitutes of either gender with false screams and greedy purses. Nobody else somehow seems regal and filthy all at once. He catches a glimpse of Hidan’s eyes as his partner throws his head, enraptured, and there he sees God for not the first nor the last time.

They lie together on the straw mattress, watching the cheap bed-hangings ripple as Hidan winds them back and forth in his hand. Sparrows cry outside the window, and Kakuzu traces a hand across Hidan’s bare stomach, following scars that twist to his waist and back, down into his pelvis, up into his throat. 

His partner sighs a prayer. “Yeshin, bless this congress of bodies,” Hidan says. Kakuzu smiles; he’s never prayed in blessing while lying in the warm, sweaty aftermath of sin. 

*

Were it not for the pike lying at Hidan’s feet (or  _ yari _ , as he calls it) and the sword tied to Kakuzu’s belt, the mercenary would certainly think the innkeep would throw them out. Nothing about their relationship has been subtle of late, and certainly not the last few nights. A certain irritation grips Hidan, and the irritation seeps out in his hands and lips late in the evening.

But this irritation is nowhere to be seen in the mornings. Hidan bows over his plate, eating with almost disgusting gusto for someone considered God’s holiest servant. Kakuzu suspects, though, that he’s never eaten quite so well.

“Kakuzu,” he mutters into the dish, “we should thank the chef before we go.”

“Indeed,” Kakuzu agrees. His own meal, warm mulled wine cut with water and a bowl of sweet-ish potage, pales in comparison to what Hidan requested: a blancmange, white on one side and red on the other, garnished in mid-fall fruits and served with thin ale. “It’s good to know someone’s using my payment from the Church.”

“Blackguard. Your money is tithe for my holy presence.” Hidan picks off a bit of apple, munching noisily. “You wouldn’t deny a prophet a meal.”

“I’d deny it a glutton.”

“And again, you blackguard.” Under the table, Hidan’s foot kicks lazily at his shin.

Kakuzu ignores the kicks and pushes back from the table, looking around for the innkeep, ever present in the dining hall with a dampened rag. “Hurry up, then, prophet. We should get moving.”

“No sense in rushing.” Hidan lazily takes another bite of the blancmange.

“Neither is there sense in idling.”

Behind him, Hidan makes some muffled protest into his food, but Kakuzu misses it over the sound of unrolling canvas and jingling coins. The first bundle of coins is nearly empty, so he unwraps a new bundle, appreciating the cardinal  _ in pectore _ ’s thoughtful banking. The fine gold discs slip pleasantly through his fingers, their irregular stamps rumbling against his fingertips, each image of king John on horseback—

—and one, then another, then another with the Capetian crest on their backs.

He remembers for a brief moment the image of a young foreigner, barely able to stumble through his French, sitting on the dock by a lonesome port town, counting up golden coins. These ones, bearing the name of Tours, can be traded for tools. These, with the name Paris, for dinner and dinner only. These, with the name Anjou, with the Capetian family crest, can only be thrown to fish in the hopes that they will choke and die.

Kakuzu upends the bag onto a nearby table, ignoring Hidan’s muddled questions. With swift, practiced hands he sorts through the bag and tears open each new bundle, separating livres tournois from livres parisis from livres capetian, francs from regional money from utter garbage, watching disgusted as each pile grows in size.

When he’s done, the pile of livres tournois is paltry. It’s a fistful, quite enough for a payment for a smaller job, but nothing close to what he would ask to be paid in order to kill a saint. The livres capetian, thankfully, are few, but he glares down the stack of nearly-useless livres parisis. Who this far south would accept such a thing? 

Hidan appears at his shoulder, gazing at the piles of money, wiping his lips against the cuff of his robe. “You’ve been cheated, my friend,” he murmurs.

“It seems I have.”

*

The men of the village wander away, foggy-headed and whining, and the women cry after them. Hidan steps down from his place atop a boulder and watches the confusion.

“Was that really necessary?” Kakuzu asks. He reaches up to adjust Hidan’s robe, brushing away the creases.

“Is any preacher’s work necessary?” Behind them, an old woman wails out a plea for her husband, aimlessly ambling in lazy loops towards the forest. “The people will be alright.”

Kakuzu folds his arms. “By which you mean that they will die.” 

“Someday, yes.” Hidan bends to pick up some scattered coins, dropped from the limp hands of peasants enraptured with his winding, chanting sermon. “But death is best for most people. Even us, mercenary.”

Kakuzu reaches to take the coins from him, brushing away dust and broken bits of hay before slipping the meagre collection into his pocket. In their place he scatters a fistful of livres parisis, then kicks them into the dirt to make the whole scene look happenstance.

“The real question,’ Hidan mutters, “is if this works. Will they really take these as their town currency now?”

“If those men are as lunatic now as you say they are, and if this,” Kakuzu pauses to pat his pockets, “is really all their money, then they should need to.”

The grumbling, moonstruck crowds continue away from them, voices vanishing behind buildings and into trees and fields. Knots of squealing rats, trapped together by the tails in panic and frenzy, begin to tire and quiet, leaving the town very much peaceful again. 

“Kakuzu, I don’t like doing this,” Hidan confides. “This feels nothing like preaching Yeshin’s word.”

“But aren’t you still doing his work?” Kakuzu looks about for the townsfolk and finally slips his arm into Hidan’s, confident that they are unwatched. “Does it really matter if anyone listens, as long as the prophet prospers?”

Hidan’s arm tightens, and he steps away, robe flying around him in indignation. “Unlike some of my present company, I do care if my Lord’s word is heard. Unless I’m in the presence of an apostate?”

“Oh, come.” Kakuzu folds his arms; Hidan’s eyes light up with the colors of the poor little town, reflecting every tiny moving thing, every fidget and twitch of his own muscles, every surge of sudden (and, he thinks, unprovoked) anger. “We’re well past caring which of us is living in apostasy, aren’t we?”

“Some of us here care for the outcome. For eternity.”

“If there is such a thing.”

Hidan remains silent for a long moment before reaching out. He grabs Kakuzu’s sleeve in a vise-grip, wrapping the fabric about his knuckles until escape becomes impossible. On his back, the _ yari _ jitters uncomfortably, as if reacting.

“Let me show you something,” he says, and hauls Kakuzu towards the paltry church.

*

It’s a surprise to Kakuzu that nobody comes to chase them out, but he hears the moans of wretched men outside as he forces open the doors. The people of this town must have better things to do. He wedges a bit of stone under one of the doors and watches Hidan sweep across the hall.

Light filters in through ill-fitted eaves. Hidan’s hair glows in the light, more silver than grey. He steps around piles of loose straw, scaring families of mice out of their dozes. Kakuzu follows at a distance, apprehensive. 

When he finally reaches the altar, Hidan has already cracked open the Bible, worn and cheap, and flips quickly through the pages. Illuminations, strangely detailed for such a shoddy book, pass in flashes.

Kakuzu catches sight of one page as Hidan’s hands still. He expects to strain his eyes against the Latin, and he leans in to squint, but he starts. French.

“An illegal Bible,” he murmurs.

“Doubtful anyone in the entire town reads Latin.” Hidan turns a page back, glancing over a lesser-known passage. “I believe it’s only the famous bits. This part is all vulgata. The old translation, too.”

“You’re surprisingly learned.”

“I’m an avatar of Yeshin, Kakuzu.” Hidan turns a few more pages, tucking back in the loose ones that fall out in droves. “And Yeshin is telling me something. He’s guiding me.”

Kakuzu watches, skeptical. No holy light descends around Hidan; no stigmata bloom on his hands. But the look in his eye is sharp and calculated in a way he’s never seen before. With a gentle brush, he takes Hidan’s free fingers and watches as he thumbs through the Five Books of Moses. Leviticus. Exodus. Genesis.

The pages slow. Hidan pauses to read passages before moving on. Then he follows the lines with his free hand, tracing the verses and moving backwards through the fall of man.  Finally, he stills, fixing his gaze on chapter 3.

“In sweat of thy cheer, thou shalt eat thy bread, till thou turn again into the earth of which thou art taken. For thou art dust, and thou shalt return to dust,” Hidan murmurs. “In man and man alike, all shall return to dust.”

Hidan pauses for a moment, thumbing at edges of pages, picking his thumbnail against the back cover. “And the holiest among us shall live the shortest, for the brighter a flame burns the quicker shall it be extinguished, for living is as water to a candle. And so shall those among us who walk with the holy ones—they too shall burn away.”

Kakuzu shifts to watch Hidan’s face, and finds that his eyes no longer scan the page. With a start, Kakuzu drops the hand; Hidan’s grip is too loose by far. His gaze fixes on the illumination at the page’s top, watching Adam tangled in the thorny vines of his cursed garden, glazed over as if lost in half-sleep. “Hidan—”

“—Before the eve of the new year, those holiest among us shall pass into shallow graves.” Hidan lifts his head and stares last the altar, towards the tapestry depicting the Son’s ascent to heaven. “From the cradle of Man, returned.”

Outside, the wind whistles gently against the gaps in the windows. The sun slips behind a hill and casts the church into shadow. Kakuzu’s hand reaches in the dark, but fails to grasp anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical notes:  
> [Old French food](http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/imagining-the-culinary-past-in-france-recipes-for-a-medieval-feast/).  
> [Old terms of endearment(?)](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blackguard)  
> What's the big deal with [livres tournois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livre_tournois)? They're the up-and-coming currency. And [livres capetian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capetian_dynasty) were major currency... with the dynasty that ended in the 1320's.  
> The [yari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yari).  
> Here's an illegal English bible. [And an illegal French one that kind of barely counts as a bible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Historiale). The vulgata sections of Hidan's found bible would probably be Jerome's Revision of the Vetus Latina  
> And this is [Genesis 3:19](https://www.biblestudytools.com/wyc/passage/?q=genesis+3:19;+genesis+3:22), the "ashes to ashes" verse, from the Wycliffe translation of 1382-ish.


	6. Lord of the Dance

The mountains fade into the distance and fields rise around them. With each passing day on the road, the stones grow smaller, and the weather cooler. Fall spirals into winter, and both men lose track of days.

Hidan’s face grows more and more drawn by the hour. He speaks little, kisses half-heartedly. His hands are still warm and firm, and in the smallest hours of the night, when Kakuzu presses close to him, he still presses back. But it is obvious that his heart is heavy.

Kakuzu tries to keep his spirits up, despite his own dour demeanor. He pulls Hidan into the brush for stolen, passionate moments. He tells tiny snippets of stories from his youth. He talks until he runs out of words.

“I’ve never heard a Gaul name like yours,” he comments one day between chill, stiff breezes. “Or maybe it’s Basque?”

“Neither.” Hidan pulls his traveling cloak around himself, hiding his nose and lips from the bite of winter.

“Are you a Frank, then?”

The road before them splits; one branch leads up a ridge and into a snow-dappled forest, the other down a hill and into a small, cozy-looking town. Hidan watches smoke rise from the houses. “I’m a Gaul,” he murmurs in confirmation. “Hidan wasn’t my birth name.”

Slowly, he starts to follow the road to the village, head dipped low against the wind. “I’m sorry, but I won’t tell you my first name. It’s Gaul through and through, I swear. But it’s a part of myself that I gave to Yeshin. In return, he gave me this name and this life.”

“And a death prophecy.” Kakuzu stands at the head of the fork, watching Hidan descend into the town, stern-faced. “You can live, Hidan. Prophecies aren’t fates.”

Hidan steadily continues down the slope, feet dragging against the trail. “I want only to do my god’s will,” he says. “I want to die for him.”

The wind whistles through diseased pine trees, and Hidan disappears into the town’s inn before Kakuzu even thinks to move.

* 

The inn’s bar is like every other bar in this forgotten corner of the country: dirty, sticky, and stocked with a watery local beer that tastes of stagnant water. Hidan presses his arm into Kakuzu’s as they sit side by side, wedged between locals and drinking the disappointing beer from cracked stoneware. 

Kakuzu thanks God (and, almost without noticing, Yeshin) that Hidan has yet to hide himself away in their rented room. The distant look hasn’t evaporated, either; Hidan sits with his beer clutched tight, staring into the foam. There’s an air about him that Kakuzu can’t read, though it escapes the locals, who are all more concerned with their drinks.

Save one.

He’s disgusted with himself that it takes so long to notice, but there’s a man in clothes far too nice, wandering the room and chatting with the men draped on shabby furniture. His fingernails are too clean, his speech too tidy. He has a sharp look, a prodding way. He’s looking for someone.

He wears an icon of a dove on his cloak.

Kakuzu takes account of the room: a public door blocked by the stranger, a door visible through the kitchens that is blocked by the barmaid, a cellar door that likely does not lead back out. His sword is trapped under the bar, leaning against the wall. The  _ yari _ is wedged under several seats. Hidan’s hair, stark silver and distinctive, is well visible when he decides to sit up.

Kakuzu’s throat dries. With a gentle, slow hand, he lifts Hidan’s cloak over his head the moment the man turns his back. 

The stranger grows more and more annoyed with each conversation. His hands start gripping shirts and snatching at hair. Kakuzu watches three men simply take the abuse, himself gripping Hidan’s arm and doing his best not to stare. 

One old farmer, smoking a pipe by the fireplace, will not stand for it, though. The inky smoke, smelling less medicinal than dangerous, curls into the scent of wood as he stands under the stranger’s hands. They face off, teeth barred, and Kakuzu thanks Yeshin as he ushers Hidan quietly from the bar and out through the kitchen, much to the barmaid’s annoyance.

The thick black smoke follows them to the street, where it curls around them before disappearing completely. Hidan looks up, lips tight, and watches the kitchen door swing closed.

*

“We will die,” Hidan says.

A day has passed; the stranger left town with a scorning shout, barely heard from their hiding place inside the town church, promising that Onfroi’s men will rain Hell on the city. Life snaps back to its old ways, swallowing the abandoned sword and pike and spitting back out playful children, lazy farmhands, and disappointing beer. The village, like all others, exists out of time and out of danger from everything but the plague. The people continue as they always have and will forever.

“I’m ready for it,” Hidan says. “I’m not upset anymore.”

“Well, you’re the only one.” Kakuzu leans against the exterior wall of the church, watching chickens scratch in the dirt. “Death is not an inevitability.”

“When Yeshin says it is, then it is. I want to do his work.”

Hidan advances to Kakuzu, strangely soft, and offers his hands. They are immediately taken. A tense smile, undergrown, begins to blossom into a true look of happiness.

“Kakuzu,” Hidan says, “Let’s celebrate our lives one more time. Before we go to our eternity.”

Kakuzu watches Hidan’s hands, spreading open to pull straight their lines. His gaze travels to the sky, overcast and grey, and remains in the clouds for quite some time. Small birds flutter to the branches of bare trees, huddling against cold breezes. 

He assents. “Very well. Show me what you had in mind.”

*

Kakuzu believes in Ankou.

He believes in folk legends about death incarnate, the man who carries away plague-sick children and emaciated elders in a cart. He believes that something, neither man nor god nor force of nature, is responsible for the paths to Heaven and Hell.

He watches as a deathmask overtakes Hidan’s face, white bone pattern on black as if painted, and he believes in the Breton tales.

Hidan prays over Kakuzu, then prays over himself. With his hands raised to a cold, dark sky, he asks Yeshin to bless them with joy and rapture. Thatch flies into the wind, ripped off the roofs of houses, and swirls in a tight spiral in the city center. 

A tiny girl, no more than a toddler, follows the thatch in a spin and begins to dance in the street. Her parents follow her, chase her in circles, and find themselves wound up in dance.

For a long moment, Kakuzu cannot find any words to use. He watches Hidan’s pale hair as it pulls away from his neck in the breeze, examining the point where black meets white on the side of his throat. A vein throbs steadily at the point between shades, a reminder that Hidan, until the eve of the new year, lives and breathes and loves him and him only.

Villagers appear from doors and windows, tumbling to the streets, and they begin to dance a dangerous whirling jig. Kakuzu takes Hidan’s hand and, silent moment shattered, they fall laughing into the fray. They dance, chests pressed together, for hours on end, unseen by the world.

Hand in hand, they leave the town behind, lost in conversation as the villagers continue to dance. A weeping man, quivering, kicks over a lantern and lights a haystack ablaze; their still-whirling forms are outlined in the light of the flames as Kakuzu and Hidan climb the hill. Ashes of the town and the cursed men who lived there follow their heels north.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking around. Someday I'm going to finish this thing off, but here's the end for now!
> 
> Historical notes:  
> [Cause of death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania).

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for sticking around. I realize what a strange AU this is, but I had a good time writing it.  
> I did not create the artwork for this story. It's been reposted with permission.  
> Please go visit the artist, [Melty](http://meltyfase.tumblr.com), on tumblr. If you enjoyed her art for this section, you can reblog it [here](https://meltyfase.tumblr.com/post/177151063994/this-is-the-first-half-of-my-diptych-i-made-for).  
> Historical notes:  
> This work is set in a fictionalized version of the [Western Schism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism).  
> [Here's some information about paper, parchment, and vellum in medieval Europe.](http://web.ceu.hu/medstud/manual/MMM/paper.html)  
> [And cardinals in pectore.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_pectore)  
> [Here's info on papal bulls](https://www.osv.com/Magazines/TheCatholicAnswer/Article/TabId/652/ArtMID/13618/ArticleID/20552/What-Is-a-Papal-Bull.aspx), though I'm not entirely sure I'm using them right anyway.  
> Keep the Plague at bay with [Four Thieves Vinegar.](http://adventures-in-making.com/recipe-the-legendary-four-thieves-vinegar/)


End file.
